Managing design / designing management

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Myself thinking, during a panel at DLD conference in Singapore.

Hi, this is Marco Maria.

I usually go with Pedro. I am designer and manager from Italy.

Currently interested in:

  1. chasing meaning in designing honest services for organic, healthy growth;
  2. juggling feasibility and business viability by-design;
  3. loosely managing design while thoroughly designing management;
  4. metrics, taxonomies and nerdish stuff.

Definitely not interested in:

  1. Chasing unicorn-like scale while meaning gets completely shaped by others (typically investors);
  2. Aiming at saving the world, with a team that can’t help itself first;
  3. The hustle for the hustle sake;
  4. Whatever is the latest tech-trend that will become normalized next month like big data. smart city, blockchain, metaverse, etc. (AI is definitely interesting, as it has use cases and raises interesting questions).
Two sketches. The first is describing the progressive noise reduction during progression of a project. The second describe different organizations structure over time.

Value creation, by design

In a business world focused on value extraction, my work aims at making businesses independent.

PAST works

Ten years ago, I was lucky enough to do the feasibility study that lead to a digital supermarket in EXPO, as well as help designing and setting up a robotic bartending system that rocked a party for Google I/O 2013 while Steve Aoki was playing.

After that, I helped designing, prototyping and testing with users every week the Superpedestrian “Copenhagen wheel” product and mobile app in Cambridge Massachussets. In Carlo Ratti Associati, I developed a design business portfolio from 3,5mln€/y to 5mln€/y in two years and helping the opening of the US branch.

As a freelance, I consulted a few startups setting them up with minimum viable brand & product definitions. I joined Pininfarina to contribute setting up the strategy team, and connect the digital expertise to the amazing products and cars crafts.

In the Presidency of Council of Ministry digital transformation department, I have contributed growing a 7 people design team into 20+ integrated center of competence, running a 15 project portfolio and a design system used by more than 2300 public entities.

design Strategy
Image representing a funnel restricting from left to right. On the left side, the dots representing embryo ideas are many and small. Progressing to the right the reduce to one, big, clear idea.
User experience, product and service
Sketch representing user experience across different products, screen sizes and situations of life.
BRANDING
Sketches representing a progression towards a brand definition. On the left, a priority list. In the center the selection of clear goals. On the right, a series of "you" in different fonts. A line connects the 3 parts, and focusing on one single brand.
SPACE design
An architectural sketch that could be representing a section, or a plan. Who cares, nobody gets architectural sketches!
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